Great-grandmother wins lottery shortly after cancer diagnosis: ‘Life is now going to be good’

EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. (WCCO) - A Minnesota great-grandmother had the best of luck in the worst of times. She won $100,000 on a scratch-off lottery ticket shortly after she was diagnosed with stage 4 brain cancer.

Great-grandmother Debbie Bury has a passion for blackjack, but the game got concerning a few weeks ago when the numbers stopped adding up.

“They weren’t coming together right. A lot of times, you have to put cards in order. They just weren’t – they didn’t want to play with me. They are like, ‘We are done with you. You don’t have it anymore,” Bury said.

Something was wrong. Bury ended up on the fifth floor at Methodist Hospital, where a doctor broke the news she had stage 4 brain cancer, a shocking diagnosis.

“She said, ‘I just gotta let you know you have three cancerous tumors in your head,” Bury said. “All I see is black, and all I see is death.”

Despite her shock, Bury could still feel the love and support from her friends.

“I would say the first day, I had about 26 friends come to see me,” she said.

The fifth floor hospital staff, including Andrea O’Hern, the oncology nurse manager, became Bury’s friends, too.

“She was a joy on the floor. The people made a crown for her that said ‘queen of Methodist Hospital.’ She was just loving it ‘cause she just lit up a room,” O’Hern said.

It’s a floor that could use some joy, and that’s what it got when a visitor brought Bury a Minnesota Vikings-themed gift: a scratch-off lottery ticket. The football team is another passion of Bury’s, and purple pride fills her heart, reminding her of her beloved father.

When she scratched the ticket, she and her friend couldn’t quite believe what they saw.

“‘Oh gosh, you got a football. Oh, my goodness, I think you won $100,’” Bury said. “He goes, ‘Oh, push it back… you just won $100,000.’”

O’Hern says word traveled fast around the hospital as excitement erupted from Bury’s room.

“It’s not all the time you get joyful surprises on the oncology floor. Just to see this is so different than what we see on the daily, and we get to celebrate with you,” she said.

In the worst of times, Bury had the best of luck.

“It felt like life is now going to be good,” she said. “It was meant to be.”

The other good news is that Bury had a successful surgery that doctors hope will give her six more years. Her cancer may be aggressive, but she is a fighter.